Mom

January 20 - February 8 2007


of course i had been in contact with my mother and my father (divorced 2003) in south africa since my symptoms had begun. there were especially many tearful phone calls to my mother. she is a nurse and i would always call her when i needed advice that i could trust when i was feeling scared and confused. and once i found the wonderful neurologists at national taiwan university hospital i could at last call my parents and tell them exactly what was wrong with me and what the treatment was. my mom wasted no time getting her visa and plane tickets to taiwan organised. this was before we found out that i would only be able to get the gamma knife surgery in March. my mom was coming early and would not be here for the surgery, but she came at the right time.

i was nervous about seeing my mother for the first time in over two years, especially since we didn't get on well when i was in south africa. we don't hate each other, we are just very different people. this might also be because i was always borrowing her car to go out drinking and even burst a tire one drunken night (i still feel bad about that!). her and my sister have always been much closer. i guess you could say i am the black sheep of the family. colin and i had decided that he would sleep in the spare room and my mom and i would share the double bed. my family is very 'closed' emotionally. we don't express our feelings and love for each other very easily so sharing a bed with my 'estranged' mother was gonna be especially tough. colin was also nervous, understandably, but he dealt with the situation very well.

my trepidation turned out to be unfounded as things with my mother actually went much better than expected. i think because:

a) she is a nurse so she is used to being around sick people. she was always calm and patient when i was having my hysterical convulsions.
b) she has been to taiwan before so she wasn't completely freaked out by the strangeness of the country, as many other westerners are.

naturally, she went straight into the mother role and did all the shopping, cooking, cleaning and looking after me. this was a great relief to colin who had been taking strain as he also had to work. i felt guilty that my mom had to spend her money and her holiday time looking after a miserable sick person. we had been planning to meet up in thailand in April, but instead she had to give up her island paradise holiday to come to boring old taiwan. i told her how guilty i felt one melancholy day and she said, with tears in her eyes, that all she cared about was me getting better. i think this was one of the most honest moments we have ever had in our relationship and was healing for both of us. of course, i still felt obligated to entertain so when i was able, we went out to dinner, went shopping - i bought a lot of clothes during this time, which made me happy until i realised that i had nowhere to wear them, then i would get depressed - and to other tourist attractions. my mom was also happy to do things on her own when i was too sick to leave the house.

just before my mom left we got a phone call from my neurosurgeon, dr. chung. they had managed to squeeze me in before Chinese New Year. i was asked to come to the veteran's hospital on Sunday February 11th to receive my gamma knife radio surgery on monday February 12th. we were ecstatic! i wouldn't have to wait until March. this was especially exciting as my convulsions were getting worse, so the earlier the treatment, the sooner i would recover. This piece of luck i have added to my (aforementioned) list of blessings. my mom considered changing her flight so that she could stay for the surgery, but then we heard from my dad that he was arriving the same day that my mom was leaving, thursday February 8th. so my mom could pass the torch to my dad, especially since we couldn't have both of them in our little flat. their relationship has been icy, at best, since the divorce.

in the end, we had some fun times and my mom did go back to south africa with 3 new pairs of shoes, a digital camera and a laptop, so she didn't do too badly for herself! when she left i started crying for my mommy and we had a tearful goodbye. so i didn't do too badly for myself either! i had finally had some real and heartfelt moments with my mom.